Field
Aspects of the present invention generally relate to an information processing system, a print system, a server apparatus, and a method for controlling the information processing system.
Description of the Related Art
Recently, as cloud services, business in which services are made available on the Internet have been developed. For example, a storage service for storing data in any format through the Internet, a database service for providing a database function, and the like are available. Such a trend has brought about a need for a print server to provide functions as a print service and a data conversion service on the Internet.
When the print service is provided as the cloud service, the print server is provided in a huge datacenter, so that hardware management is not required for each client. Furthermore, a resource can be added easily in accordance with, for example, a load on the server. Moreover, with the cloud service, data processing can be executed in a distributed manner with a large number of computing resources, and requests from a large number of client apparatuses can be simultaneously processed.
In conventional cases, a data conversion driver included in a client apparatus converts a data format into a suitable format for each printer. On the other hand, with the print service operating on the cloud, a cloud print system requiring no client apparatus can be achieved. In this context, the conversion service that converts a data format into a data format interpretable by a wide variety of printers is important. The cloud service can effectively implement functions through cooperation with other services. For example, the following mechanism can be conceived through cooperation between the conversion service that performs the data conversion and the storage service. More specifically, when converted data is provided to a client apparatus, the converted data is stored in the storage service, and is acquired by the client apparatus at a required timing.
In a mechanism in which a cloud print system and a storage service cooperate to provide converted data to a printer, conversion processing, executed by the conversion service, and converted data acquisition processing, executed by the printer, may be carried out in parallel. In such a mechanism, the conversion service may store in the storage service, a file list (URL list) of converted data that is downloadable as a file. Accordingly, the printer may acquire the file and thus acquire the converted data written in the file.
However, in the method described above, when a complete URL list of all the converted data is described at once and is provided to the printer, the printer might make an access to data for which the conversion processing has not been completed. In such a case, the converted data acquisition processing ends in an error due to the absence of the file. When only the URL of the data for which the conversion processing has been completed is described in the URL list, the URL list might be updated before the acquisition processing executed by the printer because the timing at which the URL is accessed is not synchronized between the conversion service and the printer. In such a case, the URL list is updated before the printer acquires the converted data, and thus the printer cannot acquire all the converted data.
In an example of receiving a list including a universal resource locator (URL), Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-143567 discusses that a video camera receives a download list including a universal resource locator (URL) of an access destination to download image data from an image station for the video camera. Then, the video camera accesses the URL corresponding to the image to be downloaded.